Innovation leadership is often about fun
May 22, 2008 by Miki Saxon
Post from Leadership Turn Image credit: jamesdusol
To whom do you listen to when you want to innovate? Early adaptors? Hard-core users? Core market segment?
If you do you may miss out.
Last year I wrote two posts on the error of assumptions in innovation (here and here) focusing on a diverse set of examples.
In all cases the products succeeded because they were fun (Nintendo and Shimano)—they even captured unexpected markets (Toyota’s Scion and Honda’s Element).
Fun as an innovation tool is vastly underrated.
The problem is that experts are people with excessive knowledge and/or rabid interest in the subject, so why in the world would you assume that the general public will respond as they do.
Shimano revitalized the bicycle industry by building an automatic transmission that made riding fun for people of all ages.
“The company was shocked to realize its efforts at making newer, more high-performance bikes weren’t winning over new riders. We come to find out these people not only don’t want high performance, they don’t even care about it.”
Nintendo scored big with games that are fun for the rest of us and will likely score even bigger with the new Wii Fit.
How important do you think the fun factor is?
Your comments—priceless